Do an internet search for nothing simpler than the name “Willie Soon,” or the variant of “Wei-hock Soon,” and uncountable numbers of results pop up repeating some form of the accusation or insinuation that Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysicist Dr Soon was paid industry-sourced money in exchange for falsehoods designed to undercut the certainty of catastrophic man-caused global warming. The following video by Dr Terry Gannon addresses aspects of Dr Soon’s actual funding, which the spectrum of accusers out there never tell their audiences about, and it mentions a name of one of the most prominent accusers that loyal readers of GelbspanFiles will readily recognize, Kert Davies:

We first see Davies at the 1:45 point as a guest on the Democracy Now program …

…. with a few more details spoken about him after the three minute point, and again in a bit more depth a minute later. However, much like any other aspect of the ‘crooked skeptic climate scientists’ accusation, I’m compelled to say, “but wait, there’s more …..”

Dr Gannon was of course constrained by time limits in this video. At the 1:30 point, he speaks of how the corruption accusation outbreak against Dr Soon in 2015 is illustrated by a “Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher” New York Times article, and then he notes at the 3:10 point how the efforts behind the NYT article were led by Kert Davies.

As I detailed in my February 25, 2015 GelbspanFiles blog post (subsequently reproduced at WUWT), there’s a little more to the story. The prominent accusation eruption against Dr Soon in February 2015 wasn’t just confined to the NYT, it was a trio of hit pieces from unrelated reporters across the span of three consecutive days, February 21, 22 and 23, which included two other very prominent newspapers, none of which bothered to note a particular arguably important ‘conflict of interest’ concerning Davies’ two years-prior work history.

I wasn’t giving it thought at the time, but in reference to my latest set of blog posts under the “What $5 mill might buy” category, that particular 2015 three-day event might fall under the umbrella question of “does nearly $5 million buy the kind of a high level news media coverage which is practically guaranteed to generate exponentially wider negative coverage within just 7 days?”

Dr Gannon isn’t exaggerating when he states at the 4:12 point that the accusation continues right up to the present time. A variant of the insinuation about fossil fuel industry corruption of Dr Soon is seen in paragraph 108 of the current City and County of Honolulu v. Sunoco LP et al. global warming lawsuit filed on March 9th. The Honolulu lawsuit, much like its nine other boilerplate versions, brings up the topic of ‘conflict of interest’ in its footnote citation about Dr Soon in a rather ironic fashion, considering the way the Kert Davies’ own Climate Investigations Center / Climate Files arguably has an undisclosed ‘conflict of interest’ with that law firm.

Regarding CIC’s highly questionable nonprofit status that Dr Gannon speaks of at the 4:15 point, more is seen on that at these two articles: “Climate Investigations Center Utilizes Dark Money Network to Obscure its Funders” / “Climate Change Reporting Website Obscures Its Funding With Dark Money Network.” My own recently heightened personal awareness about the amount of money coming into Davies CIC organization finally prompted me to reexamine his long-term association with Ozone Action co-founder / subsequent Greenpeace USA executive director John Passacantando.

Starting at the 4:48 point of his video, Dr Gannon says that Davies was the chief architect at Greenpeace’s ExxonSecrets website project beginning in 2004. True, but it’s more complicated than that. As I also detailed in my above-mentioned February 25, 2015 GelbspanFiles blog post, Davies’ earliest work was at the Environmental Working Group, which produced a Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research (CLEAR) report smear effort against Dr Soon ….. and then Davies teamed up with Passacantando at Ozone Action, the place I term the epicenter of the smear of skeptic climate scientists.

Regarding the quip at the 6:30 point that Dr Soon would accept money from anybody so long as he is free from direction to do so. That is also true, a detail that accusers routinely exclude in their accusations against Dr Soon.

One more detail, to illustrate an overall point. “What about how Dr Soon’s work for Exxon was described as ‘deliverables?’,” enviro-activists yell. Dr Gannon says at the 3:42 point that there was no such list of “deliverables.” On top of that, even if the label was applied to something out of Harvard-Smithsonian, at least one dedicated Soon-hater at the Desmogblog smear site called out the folly of putting any stock in the word “deliverables” as evidence of corruption.

The goal behind pushing the accusation against Dr Soon and others is to distract the public away from answering a question Dr Soon himself succinctly posed to one of his critics: “Is what I say beyond the boundaries of reasonable discussion?” When the public perceives his and other scientists’ climate assessments to be reasonable, the global warming issue doesn’t look the least bit settled ….. and that perception is what Al Gore and his mob knew early on had to be suppressed by any means possible.

When Dr Gannon speaks of the entire false corruption accusation against Dr Soon as defamation, serious consideration should be considered regarding the possibility of taking legal action against Kert Davies and others intertwined in these ongoing character assassination efforts. The smear has potentially not only harmed Dr Soon personally as a violation of civil law, it may have strayed into the far larger arena of criminal libel/slander, with widespread harm to the public from the waste of time, money, and resources spent on fighting a supposed ‘climate catastrophe’ which is very likely nothing more than natural climate variation that humans have no power to control.