Willie Soon has been an individual of significant interest lately in climate circles. Last week, he spoke at the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate change, or as we like to call it, Denial-a-Palooza. A recent Greenpeace report found that Soon accepted over $1 million in funding from fossil fuel interests, including Koch Industries. 

To top it off, RealClimate released a report yesterday revealing new issues with Soon’s 2007 paper on polar bears. The non-peer-reviewed paper has been cited extensively before, notably by Sarah Palin, as proof that polar bears are not endangered by global warming. The paper includes skeptical co-authors M.G. Dyck, R.K. Baydack, David Legates, Sallie Baliunas, Tim Ball and L.O. Hancocks.

While the paper’s central claims have already been disproven, the remaining issue is what appears to be Soon’s willing disregard for data. RealClimate found that Soon had cherry picked data showing the highest level of Arctic Oscillation (AO), a natural variability that he blamed for any increases in temperature in the Hudson Bay area:

“This is just another example of lack of scruples that climate skeptics have shown in pursuing short-term financial advantages, and basically condemning the next generations to suffer the consequences of climate change due to our lack of prudent and responsible planning."

With those words, the University of Maryland’s Distinguished Professor Eugenia Kalnay dismissed the Heartland Institute’s wholly discredited list of 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts about Man-Made Global Warming Scares.

Prof. Kalnay, with dozens of her colleagues, is outraged that Heartland Senior Fellow Dennis T. Avery included their names as contributors to a climate-change denial paper without their permission and in direct contradiction to their scientific work.

What do you get when you cross a puzzle-maker with a lawyer?

Apparently, in Kentucky at least, you get a legislative hearing by climate change "experts."

Last week a committee meeting of the Kentucky Agricultural and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on the science of climate change.

Problem was, there were no scientists.