Thoughts on "Energy & Environment"

Naomi Oreskes’ reply to Schulte got me thinking about the journal Energy & Environment, which appears to be the climate science equivalent of Rivista di Biologia (more here on that particular turkey). The journal was founded in 1990 and it offers a home for climate contrarians. According to this 2005 article, the journal is found in only 25 libraries worldwide and is unlisted in the Journal Citation Reports. Actually, I’ll take that back, it makes Rivista look like Nature.

Just as Rivista has an "interesting" editor in Guiseppe Sermonti, Energy & Environment has an unorthodox editor in Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, who is a Reader in Geography at the University of Hull despite having taken only one year of geography. As the above linked ES&T article notes:

"I’m definitely a political scientist," says Energy & Environment editor Boehmer-Christiansen ... [who] describes her doctoral work as covering international relations, but says she consults others before publishing any studies in her journal. "My science is A-level chemistry, physics, one year of geography at university, and a bit of math." She adds that her husband has a Ph.D. in physics.

So E&E’s editor (since 1996) is a political scientist who by the looks of it has less science that most liberal arts undergraduates here at Arizona State University. Just as well she consults with "others" (one assumes other denialists) and her husband (a space physicist) can always help out.

In addition, she "says that the more mainstream climatologists agree, the more suspicious she becomes about claims that human activity is causing global warming." For Boehmer-Christiansen, the more consensus there is among scientists, the greater reason there is for skepticism. I wonder how she feels about heliocentrism.