First, quickly: Roger Pielke Jr. has officially quit climate change research, writing, speaking, and congressional testimony. He says this has been his aim for a while now (probably since the FiveThirtyEight debacle) and that he was hoping to fade away, but in a blog post he makes it official.
Moving on: Willie Soon has issued a statement about his failure to properly disclose the nature of his funding. He claims that he always follows disclosure rules, but since he described some studies as "deliverables" to funders but didn't disclose that relationship, that seems unlikely.
Ironically, Soon makes the claim defending his integrity in spite of fossil fuel funding through the discredited and fossil fuel-funded Heartland Institute, who issued a statement on his behalf and put together a whole page "Debunking the Left's Attack on an Innocent Climate Scientist." Heartland's president Joseph Bast keeps it classy, saying that Soon's "critics are all ethically challenged and mental midgets by comparison."
So Soon goes to a group funded by fossil fuels to tell everyone that even if he is paid by fossil fuel corporations, that isn't why his science's primary use has been as a lobbying tool to protect fossil fuel profits from climate change policies.
Taking a slightly bigger-picture look at the controversy, Dana Nuccitelli discusses how Soon "is just a pawn" in the fossil fuel industry's attempts to follow the tobacco playbook for delaying action on climate change.
-----
Top Climate and Clean Energy Stories:
Grandmother walks across country for climate awareness
Satellite data suggests forest loss is accelerating. The annual rate of deforestation from 1990 to 2010 was 62 percent higher than in the previous decade
Change toward renewable energy can happen very quickly. Modi began calling on investors to ante up $100 billion to meet his goals. Skeptics doubted there would be that much interest, but close to 300 companies have already pledged double that amount — $200 billion for 266 GW-worth of solar and wind
Under the Dome: The climate film taking China by storm. Only in China would a documentary on air pollution garner more than 100 million views in less than 48 hours.
Solar Electricity Is Competitive Globally, Roughly 30 countries have reached “solar grid parity,” according to Deutsche Bank