Willie Soon

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Willie Soon
Born 1966
Malaysia
Residence USA
Fields Astrophysicist
Institutions Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Willie Wei-Hock Soon (born 1966) is an astrophysicist at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He is known for his views that most global warming is caused by solar variation.

In addition to writing a range of technical papers on solar and stellar behavior, the physics of climate change, and an astronomy textbook for students who have no access to telescopes, Soon co-authored The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun–Earth Connection with Steven H. Yaskell (2004). The book treats historical and proxy records of deep climate change by examining an extended global cooling period coinciding with the Maunder Minimum (c 1645-1715).[1] This period is notable for a dearth of solar activity, measured today in isotopic records and corroborated by eyewitness accounts of unusual weather at the time. In 2004 Soon was awarded the "Petr Beckmann Award for courage and achievement in the defense of scientific truth" by Doctors for Disaster Preparedness.

He is chief science adviser to the Science and Public Policy Institute, an organisation which devotes most of its scientific coverage to arguing against anthropogenic global warming or playing down the effects of global warming and whose chief policy advisor, Lord Monckton, is well known for his public opposition to the mainstream scientific opinions on global warming.[2] Soon is also associated with the George C. Marshall Institute, where he co-authored Lessons and Limits of Climate History: Was 20th Century Climate Unusual?[3] with Sallie Baliunas. The pair have also written for the Fraser Institute of Canada regarding Sun-climate connections.

Willie Soon's publications have caused controversy[4] with editors resigning from a journal which published one of his papers.[5] Soon and Baliunas have also been criticised because their research was funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute,[6] [7] a trade association.[8] Another paper coauthored by Soon started a heated debate with polar bear experts.[9]

Contents

[edit] Controversy over the 2003 Climate Research paper

In 2003 Willie Soon was first author on a review paper in the journal Climate Research, with Sallie Baliunas as co-author. This paper concluded that "the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium."[3]

Shortly thereafter, 13 authors of papers cited by Soon and Baliunas disputed that interpretation of their work.[10] There were three main objections: Soon and Baliunas used data reflective of changes in moisture, rather than temperature; they failed to distinguish between regional and hemispheric temperature anomalies; and they reconstructed past temperatures from proxy evidence not capable of resolving decadal trends. More recently, Osborn and Briffa repeated the Soon and Baliunas study but restricted themselves to records that were validated as temperature proxies, and came to a different result.[11]

Half of the editorial board of Climate Research, the journal that published the paper, resigned in protest against what they felt was a failure of the peer review process on the part of the journal.[5] Otto Kinne, managing director of the journal's parent company, stated that "CR [Climate Research] should have been more careful and insisted on solid evidence and cautious formulations before publication" and that "CR should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication."[12]

The study by Soon and Baliunas was funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute, receiving a total of $53,000 from them.[4] At the time Soon and Baliunas were also paid consultants of the Marshall Institute.[4]

[edit] Polar bear debate

A heated debate was created from a "viewpoint" article in the journal Ecological Complexity which Soon coauthored with Dyck, Baydack, Legates, Baliunas, Ball and Hancock. Several of these authors are well known for their skeptical views on global warming. In this paper they argue that climate change may not be the ultimate control factor on polar bear survival. As an alternative they list several other factors which may have a negative effect on the polar bear populations, such as increased human-bear interaction.[13] The Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, cited this paper in a bid to get polar bears delisted from the U.S. Endangered Species Act.[14] Leading polar bear scientists and environmental scientists, including Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher, responded to the paper with a viewpoint article of their own in the same journal. They stated that the alternative explanations for polar bear decline are "Largely unsupported by the data available."[9] Andrew Derocher was reported by Anchorage Daily News as saying "I would venture to guess that, beyond Markus Dyck, none of them had ever seen a polar bear"[14]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Sunny Occupation". All Malaysia. 2005-04-18. http://allmalaysia.info/news/story.asp?file=/2005/4/18/msiansabroad/10255121&sec=mi_msiansabroad. Retrieved 2009-05-30. 
  2. ^ "Global Warming Science and Public Policy". Science and Public Policy Institute. http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/. Retrieved 2009-05-29. 
  3. ^ a b >Soon, Willie (2003). "Lessons and Limits of Climate History: Was 20th Century Climate Unusual?". Marshall Institute. http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/136.pdf. Retrieved 2009-05-30. 
  4. ^ a b c Sanchez, Irene (2005-11-13). "Warming study draws fire". The Harvard Crimson. http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=348723. Retrieved 2009-05-30. 
  5. ^ a b Goodess, Clare (November 2003). "Stormy Times for Climate Research". SGR Newsletter #28. http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyTimes_NL28.htm. Retrieved 2007-04-17. 
  6. ^ Mooney, Chris (2004-04-13). "Earth Last". The American Prospect. http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=7603. Retrieved 2009-05-29. 
  7. ^ "20th Century Climate Not so Hot". Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. 2003-03-31. http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/archive/pr0310.html. Retrieved 2009-05-29. 
  8. ^ Revkin, Andrew (2005-06-08). "Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming.". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08climate.html?. Retrieved 2009-05-29. 
  9. ^ a b Stirling I. Derocher A.E. Gough W.A. Rode K. (2008). "Response to Dyck et al. (2007) on polar bears and climate change in western Hudson Bay". Ecological Complexity 5: 193–201. doi:10.1016/j.ecocom.2008.01.004. 
  10. ^ American Geophysical Union (July 7, 2003). "Leading Climate Scientists Reaffirm View that Late 20th Century Warming Was Unusual and Resulted From Human Activity". Press release. http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/prrl0319.html. Retrieved 2007-04-17. 
  11. ^ Mann, Michael E. (February 9, 2006). "A New Take on an Old Millennium". RealClimate. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/a-new-take-on-an-old-millennium/. Retrieved 2007-04-17. 
  12. ^ Kinne, Otto (2003). "Climate Research: an article unleashed worldwide storms" (PDF). Climate Research 24: 197–198. http://www.int-res.com/articles/misc/CREditorial.pdf. Retrieved 2007-04-17. 
  13. ^ Dyck M.G. Soon W. Baydack R.K. Legates D.R. Baliunas S. Ball T.F. Hancock L.O. (2007). "Polar bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change: Are warming air temperatures the "ultimate" survival control factor?". Ecological Complexity 4: 73–84. doi:10.1016/j.ecocom.2007.03.002. 
  14. ^ a b Kizzia, Tom (2008-01-27), "Funding and review of Palin-touted study criticized", Anchorage Daily News, http://www.adn.com 

[edit] External links

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