Sallie Baliunas

Baliunas and Big Oil

In the recent Union of Concerned Scientists report on Skeptics, Exxon and the tobacco industry, Baliunas is listed as being affiliated with nine organizations that have received funding from ExxonMobil. The organizations are:

• Annapolis Center for Science Based Public Policy (Science and economic advisory council member)
• Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (Academic and Scientific Advisory Board Member)
• Competitive Enterprise Institute (Report Author)
• George C. Marshall Institute (Senior Scientist and Chair of Science Advisory Board)
• Global Climate Coalition (Featured Scientist)
• Heartland Institute (Writer/contributor)
• Heritage Foundation (Writer/contributor)
• Robert Wesson Endowment Fund Fellow (1993-4,), Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
• Tech Central Station (Science Round Table Member)

Baliunas and the NRSP

Baliunas is listed as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for a Canadian group called the "Natural Resource Stewardship Project," (NRSP) a lobby organization that refuses to disclose its funding sources. The NRSP is led by executive director Tom Harris and Dr. Tim Ball. In an October 16, 2006 CanWest Global news article on who funds the NRSP, it states that "a confidentiality agreement doesn't allow him [Tom Harris] to say whether energy companies are funding his group."

DeSmog recently uncovered information that two of the three directors on the board of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project are senior executives of the High Park Advocacy Group, a Toronto based lobby firm that specializes in “energy, environment and ethics.”

Baliunas and the Climate Research controversy

In 2003, Baliunas co-authored a highly controversial paper that reviewed previous scientific papers and came to the conclusion that the climate hasn't changed in the last 2000 years. But 13 of the authors of the papers Baliunas and Soon cited refuted her interpretation of their work, and several editors of Climate Research resigned in protest at a flawed peer review process that allowed the publication.

Among the sharp criticisms of the Climate Research paper was one from Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University. When von Storch, the journal’s editor at the time, read Mann’s critique, he said he realized that his journal should never have accepted the study: “If it would have been properly reviewed, it would have been rejected on the basis of methodological flaws.” Shortly after, Von Storch and two other members of the Climate Research editorial board resigned in protest. "[T]hey submitted flawed research," Von Stroch stated at the time.

After the controversy, a more extensive version of the research was published in Energy and Environment. According to a search of WorldCat, a database of libraries, Energy and Environment is found in only 25 libraries worldwide. And the journal is not included in Journal Citation Reports, which lists the impact factors for the top 6000 peer-reviewed journals. The editor iof Energy and Environment, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen has stated that "it’s only we climate skeptics who have to look for little journals and little publishers like mine to even get published.”