Clouds are on the horizon for one climate sceptic (Image: Shaunl/Getty)

A prominent climate change sceptic may see his work re-examined by journals after Greenpeace revealed that he had not disclosed funding from fossil-fuel companies.

Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, an aerospace engineer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has published several papers arguing that global warming is caused by solar activity. His work is cited by climate sceptics such as US senator James Inhofe.

This week, Greenpeace disclosed papers revealing that Soon had received more than $1 million in funding from fossil fuel interests, including Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the Charles Koch Foundation and Southern Company – an energy company that generates half of its power from burning coal.


Greenpeace says Soon repeatedly failed to disclose his funding to academic journals – which may have violated the ethical guidelines for those journals – yet later referred to the papers as “deliverables” in communications with his funders.

Journals investigating

Kenneth Heideman of the American Meteorological Society, which published one of Soon’s papers, says: “AMS is investigating the facts and will make a decision regarding the disposition of the paper once all of these have been considered.”

Several of Soon’s papers appeared in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. “While we have not yet determined what action the journal will take, the publisher has made it clear that such allegations are taken very seriously,” says Robert Strangeway, its editor.

Greenpeace said its collaborator on the probe, the Climate Investigations Center, would be in touch with all the journals involved to notify them of the probe’s findings.

Climate scientists contacted by New Scientist were divided on the issue. “I think it is quite fundamental to disclose conflict of interest,” says Corinne Le Quéré, director of the Tyndall Institute for Climate Change Research in Norwich, UK. “Although failure to do so doesn’t necessarily mean the science if flawed, it is important to let the reviewers know what is the context in which the research was done.”

Not transparent

Le Quéré adds that some level of scrutiny may be missing if a potential conflict of interest has not been disclosed.

“People should declare interests for the sake of transparency,” says Myles Allen of the University of Oxford. “But the evidence is unaffected by where people’s funding comes from. I have received a very small grant from Shell. More importantly, I get a lot of money from the UK government. Does this mean I am automatically biased to support UK climate policy? I hope not.”

Joanna Haigh of Imperial College London, who has studied solar impacts on climate change and natural variations in the climate, points out that the reality of science publishing can be subtle. If Soon submits to journals that have expertise in climate and atmospheric science then any weaknesses should be picked up by reviewers, she says. However, she adds, he has tended to publish elsewhere.

“The revelations about the undeclared funding lead one to consider what motivates the science,” she says.