E&E Distances Itself From Peiser, GWPF And AGW Denialist Movement

E&E = Energy And Environment, the climate change denialists journal of choice.  Peiser = Benny Peiser,up until recently co-editor of the journal, but now also working for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF),  a denialist lobby group headed-up by Mr. Peiser and launched by he and Lord Nigel Lawson, Baron of Blaby (I'm not kidding), and father of the beautiful Nigella.  Lawson is also a long-time climate change denier.

E&E's  last brush with fame was a few months ago, when Gavin Schmidt of Real Climate claimed that the magazine had "dispensed with substantive peer review" and another editor, Bill Hughes, threatened libel in response.  This kerfuffle reached the U.K MSM, and I'm happy to say I helped a bit by relating the story of Oliver "Iron Sun" Manuel's dealings with E&E, which pretty clearly demonstrated what a piece of crap the journal has become.

Well, there appears to be a bit of a rethink at the magazine.  Peiser is out as co-editer, and any connection with the GWPF appears to have been severed.  Editer Sonja A Boehmer-Christiansen  writes:

A few important announcements need to be made. Firstly, E&E is not the journal of climate sceptics or deniers, as some have asserted, but will continue to publish papers (seriously peer reviewed) and Viewpoints by these people in order to inform the energy ‘community’ - academic as well as professional - that the science debate which underlies so much of its current activities is by no means over. There may well be a need for a pure science journal dedicated to debating the AGW hypothesis and any role for E&E in this debate would disappear if mainstream scientific publications ceased to reject voices that disagreed with the IPCC line. Secondly, I would like to express my deep thanks to Dr. Benny Peiser for having acting as my co-editor for several turbulent years, but he has returned to our Editorial Board and will remain a valuable support. His work at the Global warming Policy Foundation now keeps him very busy in London. Also, a clear distinction between this lobby group and Energy & Environment may be now be desirable.

Note that this isn't the first time E&E has been burned for their stance re AGW; in 2010 both Bjorn Lomborg and Jim Skea quit the editorial board over this issue.

Peer Review At E&E: A Case Study

Bill Hughes, editor of the climate change denialists journal of choice, Energy & Environment, is threatening to sue the lads at RealClimate over the claim that E&E has "effectively dispensed with substantive peer review ". Its a bullshit suit, and won't ever happen, but I thought it might serve as inspiration for this mini-case study of how E&E editors (or at least Sonja A Boehmer-Christiansen) deal with the material submitted to them. The author is Oliver "Iron Sun" Manuel, and he published this book review in their Sept 2008 issue, and Earth's Heat Source - The Sun in January 2009. From the abstract of the latter:

The Sun encompasses planet Earth, supplies the heat that warms it, and even shakes it. The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assumed that solar influence on Earth's climate is limited to changes in solar irradiance and adopted the consensus opinion of a hydrogen-filled Sun — the Standard Solar Model (SSM). They did not consider the alternative solar model and instead adopted another consensus opinion: Anthropogenic greenhouse gases play a dominant role in climate change. The SSM fails to explain the solar wind, solar cycles, and the empirical link of solar surface activity with Earth's changing climate. The alternative solar model-molded from an embarrassingly large number of unexpected observations that space-age measurements revealed since 1959-explains not only these puzzles but also how closely linked interactions between the Sun and its planets and other celestial bodies induce turbulent cycles of secondary solar characteristics that significantly affect Earth's climate.

So, yeah, Manuel is that guy that thinks the Sun is like a giant, really hot ball-bearing.

In any case, Manuel first starts circling denialists blogs and forums in 2007, including the Climatesceptics mailing list, of which I am a proud member. In late 2007, Sonja reached out to Manuel, who had been promoting his ideas on the list, as follows:

Dear Oliver
Would you have time to write a rather readable paper for me, addressing not the science community or even climate scpetics, but the energy policy community, with your challenging ideas?

References would be 'scientific ' of course. It could be a Viewpoint, relatively short and not peer reviewed, or a proper review paper, whioch would be.If interested, ask Louise for more detail, please.
Best wishes

Sonja

A year passed. In late 2008, just before the publication of the 2nd piece, Sonja posted a brief note to Climate Skeptics:

Just for info, the people i asked did not think much of Oliver's ideas and complained that he has no evidence and mainly cites himself. Hence his paper could not be published as peer reviewed, but as a viewpoint. As you know, I like to publish what is considered outside currently accepted ideas. But being published in E&E is for debate, not evidence of 'truth'.
Sonja

However, Manuel gave some push-back, noting several peer-reviewed manuscripts, mostly co-authored by him (such as this), to which Sonja eventually responded (in February 2009):

Oliver, I should really shut up about this.

I only got involved because I had to read some peer reviews of your latest paper, and they were not positive , but made me aware that there are deep rifts between solar scientists, including about the sun consists of…..

I do not want E&E to take up the solar debate as well, in part because I do not see the link to energy policy, though there may well be links to climate…though I am not even clear about that.

While I think I can understand the politics behind the AGW (climate) debate, I do not understand why solar scientists fight each other, and hope that this is not related to policy (other than getting research funding).

If not, then a genuine scientific debate may be going on, but I cannot judge this. [I wished my father in law was still alive….he started as a solar physicist but became a famous radio astronomer.

If fact and fiction are so readily distinguished as you suggest, I do not understand why the debate continues.

The only theoretical physicist I know here, did not take your argument seriously) Whom to trust??

All I would like to say is that E&E is not a journal for solar physics, the editor can’t handle it!
Sonja

And then a few days after that, after one of Manuel's supporters had flashed around some video demonstrating that the Sun is a solid dammit!--

You do know you are right in that the pictures taken over a fairly time show ejections coming from a surface that does not change at all. With the exception of the fissures everything remains constant shape. If it were a gas you know what it would look like. Just look at the clouds in the sky. It is a solid. Could it be somewhere near molten, sure. but it has features that do not change over time.

--Sonja changed her tune a little:

Most interesting, I now understand the controversy and that Oliver whilst not among the mainstream, is no crank.

Hydrogen only on top, says Oliver… iron below, but this has much wider implications for the origin of our universe!

I have had to conclude that my French referee was too dismissive….l..there are arguments on both sides, and science should,( but does not it seems at the personal level) thrive on honest argument rather than ridicule.

In any case, I am pleased we published this paper, if not as peer reviewed, but as an opinion piece. This seems fair enough as E&E is not a pure science journal, but is only interested in science as far as it influences the politics of energy policy and technology.

Sonja B-C

So that is the story of Oliver Manuel's publication history with E&E. I will leave it up to the reader to decide whether such treatment constitutes "substantive peer review".

PS. You have to be one of the 500 plus members of the CS list to get a peak behind at their archives; that's why there are no links in the above. You can look at the front page here.

PPS. Here's a link to a preprint of Earth's Heat Source.

Bjørn Lomborg, Jim Skea Quit E&E Over Global Warming

Of course, Energy and Environment is the publication of last-resort for climate change deniers: if you can't place your paper anywhere else, they'll amost certainly take it--peer-reviewed, or not, depending on your preference. Jim Skea is Research Director of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC); Bjorn Lomborg is, well, Bjorn Lomborg , author of "Cool it" and other works sceptical of the claims behind AGW.

Not sceptical enough for E&E, though; it turns out both Lomborg and Skea have recanted their associations with the magazine. From Sonja A Boehmer-Christiansen of the Climatesceptics mailing-list:

Two of my editorial board have resigned over E&E taking too strong a position on the climate science debate (Lomborg and Skea, both with much public exposure...

That message was from back in July. It was confirmed by this slightly more cryptic message from yesterday:

Lomborg has resigned from his (inactive) role as an editorial board member of E&E and explained that he could be closely associated with the sceptics. As far as I know, remembering his old ideas, he represents no real challenge to anybody since his alternative policies neither threaten or encourage anybody..the money is just not forthcoming as there are few links from his policy suggestions to the profit motive, or technological innovation, or political power.

I think this should read "could NOT be closely associated", but the message is clear in any case. Lomborg (and, I suppose, Skea) don't want to be associated with the denialist crowd anymore.

So there you have it.