[4] Baliunas was also a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College, an adjunct professor at Tennessee State University, and was deputy director of the Mount Wilson Observatory from 1991 to 2003.
"[11] The work of Willie Soon and Baliunas, suggesting that solar variability is more strongly correlated with variations in air temperature than any other factor, even carbon dioxide levels, has been widely publicized by lobby groups including the Marshall Institute[12] and Tech Central Station,[13] and mentioned in the popular press.
[17] Baliunas contends that findings of human influence on climate change are motivated by financial considerations: "If scientists and researchers were coming out releasing reports that global warming has little to do with man, and most to do with just how the planet works, there wouldn't be as much money to study it.
"[18][19] She does not address the countervailing financial considerations of the energy companies that fund some of her collaborators, including Willie Soon who received over $1 million from petroleum and coal interests since 2001.
The publisher subsequently stated that critics said that the conclusions of the paper "cannot be concluded convincingly from the evidence provided" and that the journal "should have requested appropriate revisions prior to publication.
[23] An article written by Baliunas and Soon in 2000 for the Heartland Institute, a conservative and libertarian public policy think tank, promoted the idea that ozone depletion rather than CO2 emissions could explain atmospheric warming.