January 27, 2012
Dr. Willie Soon - The Numbers Just Don't Add Up!

Dennis Mitchell
 

In the wake of the SOS story in the blog by Page, https://beniciaherald.wordpress.com/2012/02/05/science-with-the-odor-of-oil/ I sat down and dashed out (lashed out?) below what I really angers me about this and the scores of other libelous garbage that has fed the flies. I asked Willie if he would object for this sentiment to be posted and he does not ...although I think he’s just tired of even thinking about this kind of personal attack. So, as Willie recognizes, just providing rebuttal to a blog puts the writer under the thumb of the problem even if the rebuttal is posted completely and accurately- obviously the flies that follow the blog will be ready standing by to buzz about and spread even more disease. So, do you see a path that could first respond to the blog with a limited response but such that it leads to another source where the full story can be visible and held to some standard?

The paragraph below is far from a finished product but it does catch the flavor I would like to see delivered somewhere, somehow.

“ The $1,033,000.00 is a curious sum which makes me wonder if Soon is apparently not very interested in money from anyone or maybe he's just not savvy when it comes to making money. He could have abandoned ethical science and reason and easily taken a job with any of several federal agencies and earned, for himself, about $1,750,000.00 in salary and benefits as a top tier scientist since 2001. He is but one lone scientist whereas these alphabet agencies and flamboyant environmental behemoth groups have high paid characters of dubious skills in great multitudes along, amazingly, with a few folks of valid skills and a sense of morality. Too bad we don’t hear more from some of the latter category. Moreover, these agencies also shell out huge dollars as grants, foreign and domestic, to achieve financial support numbers for the mystical modeling propaganda. The sums of which would stagger the imagination. Now, Big Government and Big Green do the kind of mega-funding of agenda driven science that needs to be questioned daily. However, the oft quoted $1,033,000.00 that Soon has been implicated to control is a tired old story. As any person with a shred of honesty would note that sum is about total funding for research. Is there target audience so moronic and immoral they do not readily recognize the sad attempt repeating this version of a story to paint a fuzzy picture that Dr. Soon might be stashing all of that cash in his pocket? With what some times strikes me as some people having curious ethical behaviors, as well as very comfortable life styles, seem prone to pathetically twist institutional research funding into some dark scheme where one scientist has super powers to force an influential institution to hand over the money as if he were a bank robber with a gun. Only government has the real power to pull that trick. Is anyone out there implying Dr. Soon was taking cash and not reporting it on his income tax return? Is anyone out there implying that these funds are being misrepresented with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Soon is somehow spirited the big bucks away? Telling a lie over and over does not make it become the truth. Galileo still gets no peace even in the grave.”

   

Dennis Mitchell is certified as a Qualified Environmental Professional (QEP) by the Institute of Professional Environmental Practice (IPEP) and is presently the chair of Ethics Committee for IPEP. He was a recipient of the Lifetime Honorary Award from the International Air & Waste Management Association in 2001. He was chair of the Climate Change Panel at the 104th International a&WMA Conference. He has been a member of Louisiana Society of CPA’s since 1985 and retired from Troy University where he taught both in both science and accounting.