to the oil industry-funded Science and Public Policy Institute, and an Adjunct Professor of the Faculty of Science and Environmental Studies of the University of Putra, Malaysia. In 2004, Soon received the "Petr Beckmann Award for outstanding contributions to the defense of scientific truth" from the conservative Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, which Bloomberg News describes as a forum on "fringe-science topics" such as global warming denial and The Guardian as a "fringe political group" and as a "truly bizarre lobby group". In 2014, Soon received the "Courage in Defense of Science award" from the George C. Marshall Institute. Since 2018 Soon has been a principal of the Center for Environmental Research and Earth Sciences (CERES), described as a "multi-disciplinary and independent research group." 2003: Climate Research controversy In 2003, Willie Soon was first author on a review paper in the journal Climate Research, with Sallie Baliunas as co-author. This paper concluded that "the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium." Shortly thereafter, 13 scientists published a refutation of the paper. They raised three main objections: (1) Soon and Baliunas used data reflective of changes in moisture, rather than temperature; (2) they failed to distinguish between regional and hemispheric mean temperature anomalies; and (3) they reconstructed past temperatures from proxy evidence not capable of resolving decadal trends. Soon, Baliunas and geography professor David Legates published a response to these objections. After disagreement with the publisher and with other members of the editorial board, Hans von Storch, Clare Goodess, and two more members of the journal's ten-member editorial board resigned in protest against what they felt was a failure of the peer review process on the part of the journal. Otto Kinne, managing director of the journal's parent company, eventually stated that "CR [Climate Research] should have been more careful and insisted on solid evidence and cautious formulations before publication" and that "CR should have requested appropriate revisions of the manuscript prior to publication." Soon and Baliunas were also criticised because they did not disclose that their research was funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute. 2011: Funding controversy In 2011, it emerged that Soon received over $1 million from petroleum and coal interests since 2001. Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian documents obtained by Greenpeace under the US Freedom of Information Act show that the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation